Sarah was portrayed by Linda Hamilton in The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, by Lena Headey in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and by Emilia Clarke and Willa Taylor in Terminator Genisys.

Very little is known about Sarah's life prior to May 12, 1984. The Terminator does not specify her age or birth date, although according to the original script (available on the Special Edition DVD), she was 19 years old. The film was primarily set on May 12–14, 1984; according to the script, her birth date would be between May 15, 1964, and May 11, 1965.[citation needed]

In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Sarah's psychologist states she is 29. The film takes place when John (born February 28, 1985) is 10, placing Sarah's birth date between March 1, 1965, and February 25, 1967, making her either 17, 18, or 19 during The Terminator. Many of the franchise's hardcore fans and writers of "Terminator" novels have speculated Sarah's exact date of birth is November 13, 1965, because this date is compatible with her given age in The Terminator and her stated age by the end of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles in the final episode "Born to Run".[citation needed]

The tombstone shown in Terminator 3 reads 1959–1997. This birth year would make her 24 or 25 during The Terminator. She and John were living "off the grid" in her adult years, routinely using false names, birthdates, inter alia. Her tomb was really a weapons cache. She dies of leukemia sometime after "Judgment Day" (August 29, 1997). Terminator 3 changes John's age in the second film from 10 to 13, introducing contradictions in the films' datings that cannot be reconciled to one timeline.

The program becomes self-aware, seizes control of most of the world's military hardware (including highly advanced robots), and launches an all-out attack on human beings. John Connor eventually leads the remnants of the world's military and survivors, The Resistance, to victory, only to discover Skynet had invented a means of time travel and sent an android killer back in time to destroy John Connor's mother before he is born. John Connor is Sarah's future son; he sends back a trusted sergeant, Kyle Reese, to protect his mother. During their brief time together, Sarah falls in love with Kyle, who tells Sarah she would be responsible for training John in the skills and tactics he would use to fight Skynet.

Kyle protects Sarah from the Terminator and they flee together. Initially, she is unaware that Reese has been in love with her. While they are avoiding the Terminator, she realizes Kyle is John's father-to-be; they have sex that results in John's conception. Kyle dies fighting the Terminator in a Cyberdyne factory. Sarah crushes the Terminator in a hydraulic press. Kyle's sincerity and courage inspires her to develop the skills and abilities that make her a suitable mentor and teacher to John. After these events, Sarah becomes a fugitive and begins making a voice recording for John to give to him later in life. While recording the tape, a boy takes a photograph that he sells to her; John will give this to Kyle in the future.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day is set eleven years after the events of The Terminator. Sarah and her son John (Edward Furlong) have been separated; John is now ten years old and living in a foster home with Todd and Janelle Voight, and Sarah has been institutionalized. In the years between the films, she has become a muscled, ferocious warrior. After the death of Kyle Reese, Sarah takes his warnings and the responsibility of raising her son to heart. Her fixation on the disaster and her fanatical desire to keep John safe has made her mentally unstable and very violent, which is aggravated by her fear and hatred of the T-800. She lives off-grid to protect herself and John. Sarah lived as an outlaw and tried to teach her son the skills he would need to lead the resistance. She is captured and sent to hospital after trying to blow up a computer factory. Several times at the hospital, she has tried to improve her behavior in hope of getting to see her son, but her caregivers do not believe her. Her activities and claims of fighting evil robots from the future led to her being deemed incurable.

Sarah only seemed to confirm the judgment of psychiatrists by committing acts of violence against hospital staff. She tries to escape multiple times; during her final escape attempt, Sarah encounters two Terminator models; the T-1000 (Robert Patrick), a liquid metal android sent back to kill her son; and the T-800 (Schwarzenegger) that was sent back by John's future self (Michael Edwards) to protect them. When she initially encounters the T-800, she flees in terror and is almost captured by the hospital staff, but she goes with the android. They escape in a police car after knocking the driver unconscious. Sarah finds it nearly impossible to accept the T-800 is benevolent; throughout the film she remains hostile towards it. John develops a bond with it, resembling a father-son relationship. In the director's cut of the movie, Sarah has an opportunity to destroy the machine's CPU. She nearly does so but John persuades her they need its help.[2] While in Mexico, Sarah loses her hostility towards the machine.

After having a nightmare about Judgement Day occurring, Sarah tries to murder Miles Dyson (Joe Morton), a computer researcher who works at Cyberdyne Systems and is destined to build the microprocessor that will become Skynet. In doing this, she loses touch with her humanity, becoming similar to the Terminator itself. She finds she cannot kill Dyson in front of his family. Shortly afterwards, John and the T-800 arrive; they and Sarah persuade Dyson to stop his research and destroy all recovered remnants of the first Terminator. After the T-1000 is defeated, the T-800 lets itself be destroyed with the help of Sarah despite John's protests. Sarah gains respect for the T-800 and offers her hand in friendship before its final sacrifice. Because of this event, Sarah looks to the future with renewed hope.

The alternate ending for Terminator 2: Judgment Day available on the Ultimate Edition DVD and the Skynet Edition Blu-ray shows Sarah alive and well on August 29, 2029. She is an elderly grandmother and John is a Senator in a world in which Skynet was never able to start its war on humanity.

In Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Sarah Connor has died from acute myeloid leukemia in 1997 after a three-year battle with the disease. She is mentioned by John (Nick Stahl) and the T-850 (Schwarzenegger). She lived long enough to see the 1997 "Judgment Day" pass without incident, and was cremated in Mexico. Never truly believing they had beaten Skynet, her friends store a cache of weapons in a casket for John to find in the event that Judgment Day was not averted and the Terminators returned, in accordance with her will.

As the result of Skynet sending a T-1000 (Lee Byung-hun) to an earlier point in Sarah's life in an attempt to eliminate John Connor, Sarah is nine when her parents are killed by it. She is found and raised by a reprogrammed T-800 Model 101 (Schwarzenegger) sent by an unknown party to be her guardian after her escape.[3] Clarke's Sarah integrates elements of both Linda Hamilton's portrayal and Edward Furlong’s portrayal of John in Terminator 2: Judgment Day; young Sarah teaches the android, which she calls the Guardian, how to be more human and forms an emotional bond with the T-800, regarding it as a surrogate father after her parents' deaths.

After the T-1000's attack, Sarah learns from the Guardian of her assailant's motive and about her destiny as John Connor's (Jason Clarke) future mother and the Resistance's war against Skynet. After learning that her alternate self was a formidable warrior after the events in the original timeline's 1984, Sarah instructs the Guardian to train her to become as strong as her counterpart. Because she was trained in combat since childhood, Sarah is not a damsel in distress and is not dependent upon Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) after his arrival from the original future timeline, but rather is fighting alongside with him. With the help from the Guardian and Reese, Sarah lures the T-1000 into a trap filled with hydrochloric acid. Sarah initially resents her relationship with Kyle being dictated by fate, she gradually falls in love with him. She also questions John Connor's morality; she is aware that, in the original timeline, her alternate future son deliberately sent his own father back to ensure his own existence at the cost of Kyle's life, and thus causing Sarah to be afraid of John's character. Because of her training, Sarah gains extensive knowledge of Skynet, and replicates its time machine with her mentor. Despite having destroyed the T-1000, Sarah plans to time travel and destroy Skynet in retaliation for it sending the T-1000 and the original Terminator (Brett Azar with Schwarzenegger's digitally de-aged face). She sees averting Judgment Day as the ideal alternative rather than conceiving John with Reese, despite knowing her yet-to-be conceived son would become a savior in the post-apocalyptic future.

Discovering the date of Skynet's initial attack has changed from 1997 to 2017, Sarah and Kyle travel 33 years into the future to stop Skynet; they fight to avert its impending rise, and against the alternate version of John—who has been compromised by Skynet and changed into a nanocyte-cyborg T-3000—with the help of the Guardian. After John's defeat and the prevention of Skynet from spreading worldwide, the trio prepares to face an unknown future, unaware that Skynet is now self-aware in Cyberdyne's underground facility.

In November 2005, 20th Century Fox announced that it would produce a television series called Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles featuring the adventures of the title character and her son in the years after Terminator 2: Judgment Day.[4] In November 2006, it announced that Lena Headey had been chosen to play Sarah.[5] The choice of Headey was criticized by several fans and critics, who said she bore no resemblance to the athletic, muscular character portrayed by Hamilton.[6] The controversy was covered by the Los Angeles Times,[6]The Boston Herald,[7] and The Guardian,[7] as well as in online forums.[7]

Series creator Josh Friedman auditioned over 300 actors for the role; he said he was looking for was someone "who embodied that spirit and who was believable in that role and not just some glammed up, Hollywood, actressy thing".[8]

After a friend recommended English actor Lena Headey for the role, Friedman watched her audition tape and thought she was "a tough, tough woman".[8] Having seen The Terminator when she was a teenager,[9] Headey was aware of the iconic status of the character; she said, "Linda Hamilton will always be the original Sarah Connor and it's a very strong print that she's left, but hopefully people will embrace what I bring to Sarah and see it with fresh eyes".[10] When asked about her approach to the role, Headey said, "I'm playing a mother who is a single parent, bringing up a teenage son, who also happens to save the world—as a byline to her life. And the way I would play that is someone who's passionate and scared and angry and a mother, all these things. So I approach that just trying to be honest within the boundaries of her ..."[11]

In 1999, four years after the events of Terminator 2. Sarah and John Connor are living undercover after being blamed for the murder of Miles Dyson, Sarah engaged to paramedic Charley Dixon. Fearing discovery and the certainty of a stable life, they flee again. On his first day in his new school, John is attacked by a T-888 Terminator posing as a substitute teacher called Cromartie. He escapes with the help of Cameron Phillips, a Terminator that resembles a teenage girl, sent back in time by the future John to protect him. Sarah hears of the shooting and rushes to the school but is captured by Cromartie, who uses her to lure John into a trap. Again with the help of Cameron, they flee to a bank where resistance members have hidden the parts of a time machine. As Cromartie attacks them, the trio disappear into the year 2007.

Cameron suggests to Sarah their primary mission should be to stop Skynet, estimated to go online in 2011. Sarah argues against this, but Cameron tells her she would have died from cancer in 2005. The three characters try to evade discovery and find the origins of Skynet. In the third episode of the series, Sarah seeks to avoid getting cancer; she trains her body and takes vitamins and medications.

Sarah's relationship with Cameron has been repeatedly antagonistic and they share a mutual distrust. As Sarah attempts to teach Cameron the value of a human life, Cameron argues the importance of their mission to thwart Skynet's creation even if killing is necessary. During battles with Terminators programmed to kill the Connors, Sarah and Cameron often find themselves working together. Also, since Cameron is the only other person who knows of her cancer situation, Sarah often approaches her for advice in the matter.

In the episode "Queen's Gambit", she discovers that her dead lover Kyle Reese has a brother named Derek, who is also a time-travelling Resistance agent. She hopes to save Derek from being klilled by androids. Sarah tells John about his true identity and he seeks help from her former fiancé Charley Dixon to save his uncle's life. Despite her knowledge of his connection to Kyle, Sarah continues to distrust Derek because she thinks he killed Andrew "Andy" Goode, one of the creators of Skynet. Despite their mutual distrust, there is some attraction between them.

In the second season, Sarah worries about contracting and dying of cancer. She meets John's new friend Riley Dawson, and is concerned their friendship risks the family's safety from Skynet and Riley's safety. Sarah and Derek help Charley rescue his wife from Cromartie, but she dies in a bomb explosion. Sarah shelters a young boy named Marty Bedell who is being hunted by a T-888 because he shares his name with a future high-ranking member of the human resistance. An attack from Margos Sarkissian leaves John traumatized. Sarah takes the blame of Sarkissian's death for John, which Derek and Cameron later discover when John and Sarah argue. their relationship changes; John cannot let go of his guilt for killing Sarkissian; Sarah realizes that she cannot always protect her son. She seeks counseling from family psychiatrist Boyd Sherman but discovers his role in Skynet's future.

Sarah is kidnapped by Cromartie, but she is rescued by John and James Ellison, an FBI agent who was earlier determined to bring her to justice. Along with Derek and Cameron, they plan to lure Cromartie into a nearby church; they kill and bury it and plan to destroy it later. Sarah smashes its CPu; her stress after the battle results in nightmares and sleepwalking. She visits Dr. Sherman again but is unable to be honest with him. Sarah remembers seeing a three-dotted symbol in her dreams. She has seen this before; it was left by a dying Resistance soldier in her basement. Her obsession with the symbol leads her to Dakara Systems, a technology company whose logo includes it. There, Alexander Agagi II is developing an artificial intelligence program named "Emma". Realizing she has been chasing the wrong lead, Sarah's stress becomes uncontrollable and she smashes mirrors in her bathroom. Derek thinks Sarah is losing her sanity.

At a UFO convention, which Sarah attends to investigate the three-dotted sign, she meets a woman named Eileen, who is really Alan Park, a scientist who specialized in Light Detection and Ranging. Fearing for his life he underwent sex reassignment surgery. He thinks he is being targeted by his former employer, and that drone sightings in the Mojave Desert are a government conspiracy. Sarah takes him to a hypnotherapist named Dr. Barbara Morris, to unravel his memories to reveal the location of the facility. An assassin arrives during the session and murders Morris and Park. Sarah has recorded the session; Park's clues lead her to a warehouse. As she entered the building, she finght and apparently kills a man named Ed Winston, who has wounded her leg. Inside the warehouse, she sees three bright dots in the sky; they are hauls of a Hunter-Killer craft from the future. She kidnaps and forces a doctor to remove the bullet from her leg, and then tells Derek to destroy the evidence of her hospitalization to prevent the authorities and the machines from learning her identity and tracking her. After Derek finds her, Sarah decides to tell him about his relation to John, but he already knows. The family arrives at a company town, Charm Acres, looking for survivors of the warehouse explosion. At the end of their search, Sarah, John, Derek and Cameron see the Hunter-Killer drone.

Ed Winston has survived being shot by Sarah. Following a lead from Charm Acres, Sarah visits the factory where Winston kidnapped her and subjected her to hallucinogenic drugs to find out why she bombed the factory and the identities of her accomplices. After enduring Winston's physical and psychological torments, Sarah breaks free and attacks and shoots him in the head, killing him. She is arrested by the police, beaten up and taken to jail.

Sarah is rescued from jail by John and Cameron; she accompanies them to go see the T-1001 impersonating Catherine Weaver, where it is suggested that she is building something like Skynet, hoping to defeat it. Before Sarah can find out more, the prototype Hunter-Killer assaults the building and the group escape. In the building's basement Cameron gives her A.I. chip to Weaver's creation, which is now stored in the exhumed body of Cromartie, who takes it into the future. John finds Cameron's empty shell lying in the basement and a repeating message on the computer monitors reading, "I'm sorry, John". John discovers he cannot let her go. In an attempt to save both Cameron and Weaver's creation, both John and Catherine go to the future after the Cromartie shell, while Sarah remains in the present to continue the fight.

In the T2 novel series, Sarah is living in Paraguay under the assumed name Suzanne Krieger (the German word for "warrior"); she and John are hiding as fugitives from the U.S. government. Dieter von Rossbach, a former Austrian counter-terrorism operative and model for the Terminator, moves into the neighboring home. He is drawn to the Connors; after Sarah tells him about the future war, they are attacked by a new T-800 created in the present by a new Terminator model, the I-950 Infiltrator. Realizing Judgment Day has not been averted, they once again try to stop Skynet's creation.

^ abcSmith, David (January 20, 2008). "Weedy action heroine under fire". London: The Observer. Retrieved 2008-01-20. Fans and feminists criticize a British actress for having the wrong physique to play the star role in American TV's hit Terminator spin-off